Top 10 Questions and Their Answers: What The Local Cache Is Good For

Last week we gave you a few tips on how to protect yourself from catching a virus. This week will will explain the local cache and its role.

One of Wuala's main characteristics is that all data is encrypted before it is transmitted. This means that no one can access your files without your approval.

While uploading files, an encrypted version of the complete file must be created first. This encrypted file is saved in the local cache. Once created, the file is split into many fragments and sent to our servers before it is being maintained in the Wuala Cloud.

The Role of the Cache
The main role of the cache is to store encrypted versions of your files during the upload process. In addition, files which have been downloaded will be stored in the local cache and maintained in the Wuala Cloud, if necessary.

The local cache will be filled up until the maximum size is reached (per default 5 GB). Once full, completely uploaded files will be deleted in order to free space for new files. If uploading a large amount of files results in an exceedance of the cache, the encryption process will pause during the insertion. It will proceed as soon as the previous files have been uploaded in order to free space for the subsequent unencrypted files.

In this case, we recommend to change the size of the local cache to speed up the upload. Just go to Tools > Options > Local Cache (Win/Linux) or Preferences > Local Cache (Mac). If you have plenty of local storage, you can also set the cache size to large values like 50 GB. If you do so, large files won't fall out of the cache that fast and you won't need to download them twice.